Chronicles of a Dallas Cowboys Fan: Growing Up With America''''s Team in the 1960''''s by John Eisenberg pptx

DIVERSIONBOOKS Chronicles of a Dallas Cowboys Fan Growing Up With America’s Team in the 1960s by John Eisenberg DIVERSIONBOOKS Copyright Diversion Books A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp 443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008 New York, NY 10016 www.DiversionBooks.com Copyright © 2012 by John Eisenberg All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com First Diversion Books edition December 2012 ISBN: 978-1-938120-73-2 DIVERSIONBOOKS Dedication To my parents, with love and gratitude DIVERSIONBOOKS Introduction The idea for this book was borrowed One summer day in 1994 in my adopted hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, where I moved from Dallas for a newspaper job, I picked up a copy of When the Colts Belonged to Baltimore, by William Gildea, a sportswriter for the Washington Post He had grown up in Baltimore in the 1950s, cheering for Johnny Unitas and the Colts with his dad His book was a lovely reminiscence of that team, that time and his family, and I thought, ―You had the same experience with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1960s You should write your version.‖ My biggest fear in taking on such a project was enough time hadn‘t elapsed since those days I was less than forty years old, a father of two small children and still something of a child myself, at least in my mind It was hard to believe my life had historical value I wasn‘t old enough Nonetheless, the concept became a reality with the release of Cotton Bowl Days in 1996, and to my delight, my chronicle of my experiences as a young boy growing up in Dallas in the thrall of the Cowboys seemed to touch a chord with readers I received letters from fans of the Cowboys thanking me for conjuring up the old days Even fans of other teams reached out, saying they could relate One Dallas radio broadcaster called it ―the best book ever written about the Cowboys,‖ and Don Meredith himself called to tell me I ―got it right,‖ a stroke of praise I valued more than any Sixteen years have passed since the book was published, enough time for me to have written a handful of other volumes about horse racing, baseball and pro football Now, Cotton Bowl Days is getting new life as an eBook, hopefully introducing it to another generation of football fans, and my earlier anxieties about my life having any historical value are gone My children have grown up and left the house The newspaper business has crumbled Pro football has undergone fundamental changes I have no doubt a rendering of the early days of the Cowboys, before they were ―America‘s Team,‖ will read like ancient history Since the book was first published, Tom Landry and Tex Schramm have died, as has Meredith and, alas, my father, whose lessons to me about being a fan are one of the book‘s touchstones The Cowboys no longer even play in Texas Stadium, much less the Cotton Bowl Jerry Jones, the current owner of the team, has built a Taj Mahal-like stadium in Arlington with dancing girls writhing in cages in the upper deck Cowboy games in a half-empty Cotton Bowl might as well have happened when dinosaurs roamed the earth The Cotton Bowl barely had electric scoreboards, but inside Jones‘ glittering stadium, a hi-definition television as large as Oak Cliff hovers over the field like an alien craft, dominating the attention of everyone, even the players For some reason it reminds me of Rome before the fall The Cowboy franchise is reportedly worth $2 billion now after more than two decades under Jones The story of Clint Murchison paying $600,000 to get the franchise rolling in 1960 seems ludicrous Many of the team‘s current fans probably have heard of Bob Lilly, the Hall of Fame defensive tackle and quintessential Cowboy whose postfootball life is captured in the book, but I am guessing Don Perkins, the hard-charging fullback from those days, whom I also interviewed, could walk through Jones‘ stadium for an entire afternoon without being recognized And if the fans don‘t know of him, they DIVERSIONBOOKS certainly don‘t know about lesser lights from the early years such as Eddie LeBaron, Amos Marsh or Sonny Gibbs But it is too easy to pile on Jones for disdaining the team‘s tradition and caring more about making money than winning games (the Cowboys have two playoff wins since Cotton Bowl Days was published) The entire NFL is more of a corporate, bottom-line business these days Its popularity has soared to the point that it generates $9 billion in annual revenues and dominates the country‘s sports conversation 365 days a year Nothing tops it And with the rise of the Internet and social media, that sports conversation is faster and louder than ever, with the focus strictly on what‘s happening right now, this season, this week, as we speak The good old days have a hard time getting any attention from either fans or front offices They don‘t make money In the fall of 2012 I published a new book set in the Cowboys‘ first decade, titled Ten-Gallon War, about the three years in which the Cowboys and the American Football League‘s Dallas Texans battled for the hearts and minds of the city‘s fans I devote a chapter to the subject in Cotton Bowl Days, and the people at NFL Films read it and asked me to talk about it in Full Color Football, their fine documentary about the history of the AFL That appearance led me to write an entire book on the subject, and at a promotional party upon its release, I ran into Chuck Howley, the star linebacker from the Cowboys‘ early days He had nicely brought Tom Landry‘s wife to the event, and now he had stood in a long line to get me to sign his copy of the book ―You‘re sure keeping a low profile,‖ I said as I scrawled my name Howley gave me a wry grin ―Ah,‖ he said with a wave of the hand, ―no one remembers shit anymore.‖ Maybe there is some truth in that But while my feet are as firmly planted as anyone‘s in today‘s NFL (I write columns for the Baltimore Ravens‘ website, having left my newspaper gig five years ago), I refuse to believe the past has no instructive value It surely does If anything, a re-tracing of the Cowboys‘ early days, through one fan‘s experiences, illustrates how we all got here, for better or worse As different as the NFL was back in the day, you can draw a straight line from then to now The eras belong to the same continuum Yes, the journey almost seems like a magic trick now – that‘s how different things are today – but it happened You can read about it in these pages The Cowboys weren‘t always a billion-dollar conflagration known as ―America‘s Team.‖ They were a dusty team of regular guys, cast on a human scale, playing in a concrete tureen, as easy to embrace as a friendly neighbor I know I was there DIVERSIONBOOKS Chapter One When I was a boy in Dallas in the 1960s, Cowboy games at the Cotton Bowl were a family affair My grandfather, Louis Tobian, owned 10 season tickets and lorded over them with patriarchal sway The regular Sunday afternoon crew included me, my father, my Uncle Milton, my cousin Louis, my grandfather, and such semiregulars as my mother, my sister, my grandmother, my aunt Carolyn, my great-uncle Isadore, his wife Bayla, my aunt Minnie, my cousins Laurie and Susan, my cousin Jack, his wife Bee, his son Jack Jr., and various other relatives, politicians, rabbis, friends, and strays We all drove to the games together, crammed into a long yellow station wagon with wood paneling on the sides My great-uncle Bill, the oil wildcatter, rarely came because when he did he would sit there coaching the team and calling plays before the ball was snapped, and my grandfather couldn‘t stand to listen to him I was the youngest, the baby of the entire family My father, Seymour Eisenberg, a doctor who was then the chief of medicine at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital, began taking me to the games soon after the Cowboys joined the National Football League as a pitiful expansion team in 1960 I was four years old that autumn, barely old enough to count the downs My father thought he was getting away with one, mixing his weekend parental chores with the conviviality of a football game, but within several years I was there by choice When I was six, in the midst of my apprenticeship as a fan, I rose from my place on the Cotton Bowl‘s wooden benches as the quarterback, Don Meredith, held onto the ball too long and was tackled while attempting to pass ―Just throw the son of a bitch, Meredith!‖ I hollered In the ensuing silence, my father quickly explained that my sister, five years older, had taught me that language Right When I was eight and vacationing at my other grandmother‘s house in WinstonSalem, North Carolina, my father helped me fall asleep one restless night by suggesting that I play out an imaginary Cowboy game in my mind; he knew that would comfort me in an unfamiliar bed ―Send Perkins up the middle on first down,‖ he said, smiling from the foot of the bed He always joked about the predictability of Cowboy coach Tom Landry‘s play-calling on first down, complaining that it never strayed from a simple run up the middle by the fullback, Don Perkins (He was not alone in his criticism Perkins ran so often on first down that fans chanted, ―Hey, diddle diddle/Perkins up the middle.‖) When I was ten, the Cowboys outgrew the failings of their infancy and became a championship contender I followed them with the single-minded zeal of young love I knew the uniform numbers, heights, and weights of every player, and all of their relevant statistics I knew the years and rounds in which they had been selected in the college draft I knew the final scores and salient details of every game the Cowboys had played for as long as I could remember My grandfather, whom we called Pop, was amazed and amused by his grandson, the walking Cowboy encyclopedia When he gathered the family for dinners at Arthur‘s, a steak house where his portrait hung, or at the Egyptian Lounge, a vaguely dangerous place on Mockingbird Lane where we sat in the dark smoky club room and occasionally saw a Cowboy player eating spaghetti after a game, Pop would steer me around the room to his friends at other tables and, wearing a wry smile, pepper me with questions What DIVERSIONBOOKS was the score at Pittsburgh in ‘63? Who was number 77? Where did Bob Lilly go to college? I never let him down Most of the players were average in the early days and largely unknown outside Dallas, but in my parochialism I saw them bathed in the bright lights of stardom There was Amos Marsh, the talented but mistake-prone fullback (―They gave him his plane ticket out of town and he fumbled it,‖ my father said.) There was Eddie LeBaron, the Cowboys‘ first quarterback, a little widget who taught Meredith the ropes There was Sonny Gibbs, a six-foot-seven quarterback from Texas Christian University who proved far better as a conversation piece than a player There was Colin Ridgway, an Australian punter who was going to revolutionize the game but instead kicked balls straight up in the air The team‘s first stars were Perkins, a tough little fullback who made All-Pro in ‘62; Jerry Tubbs, a heady linebacker from Oklahoma; Frank Clarke, the team‘s first big-play threat; and Meredith, Dallas‘s first pro sports superstar, a charismatic East Texan who carried on a love-hate relationship with the city The Cowboys were not losers for long During the early ‘60s they shrewdly accumulated a group of players who melded into a playoff contender, and rose to the NFL‘s top tier, surpassing more established franchises in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington These players began the Cowboys‘ run of success that continued for two decades There was Bob Hayes, the ―World‘s Fastest Human,‖ winner of the gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the ‘64 Olympics, transformed magically by the Cowboys into an end running the fastest pass routes ever witnessed There was Bob Lilly, the quintessential Cowboy, a small-town Texan who became a Hall of Fame defensive tackle There was Mel Renfro, a Hall of Fame cornerback who tantalized with his quickness There was Lee Roy Jordan, the mean middle linebacker, of whom assistant coach Ernie Stautner once said, ―If he was as big as Butkus, he‘d be illegal.‖ There was Dan Reeves, the drawling halfback with a rare feel for the game These were the heroes of my youth Just as young fans in New York were raised in the thrall of Jackie Robinson‘s Dodgers and Mickey Mantle‘s Yankees, and those in Baltimore fell for Johnny Unitas and the Colts after they beat the Giants in ―The Greatest Game Ever Played‖ in ‘58, those of us who grew up in Dallas in the ‘60s lay claim to the Cowboys as secular religious figures Meredith, Renfro, and Perkins were my Mantle, Robinson, and Unitas On the Sundays when the Cowboys played at the Cotton Bowl, my father and Uncle Milton collected me and my cousin Louis from Sunday school at Temple Emanu-El on Northwest Highway (the last hour seemed to last a hundred minutes), and drove across town to Lakewood and my grandparents‘ two-story brick house on Swiss Avenue, a graceful, old-money street with a grassy island running down the middle On cold days I raced upstairs, took off my Sunday clothes, and changed into the winter clothes my mother had sent along On warm days I took off my Sunday school tie, stuffed it into a pocket, and went to the game in a dress shirt and slacks Then it was back downstairs to the rambling kitchen at the back of the house, where everyone gobbled down a sandwich or a bowl of soup, banged out the screen door and found a seat in the overcrowded car My father usually drove, with Pop sitting next to him in the front passenger seat, ordering him when to turn left and right Pop had the route all mapped out Avoiding the DIVERSIONBOOKS main streams of traffic, we negotiated the back roads of East Dallas to Fair Park, motoring slowly through sad neighborhoods of small wood-framed houses with cluttered front yards and sagging porches Louis and I sat in the third seat, facing backwards, giggling and giddy with anticipation and oblivious to the lower-middle class sea we parted as we drove along Over the years our route was burnished into my memory along with the Cowboy players‘ numbers and statistics: down Swiss to Beacon Street, left onto Lindsley Avenue, right onto Parry Avenue Parry took us to the state fairgrounds, where we made a devilish U-turn in traffic for which my father summoned his courage all week, and glided to the entrance of a parking lot next to a railroad yard just outside Fair Park‘s north entrance We paid a dollar to park on the gravel by a fence and began the long walk through the fairgrounds to the Cotton Bowl We went past the Women‘s Building, past the Automobile Building, past the peanut and popcorn hawkers, and stopped to buy a game program for 50 cents from a stout, dark-haired man who stood on the same grassy spot every week The late morning was cast in a slanting light, the anticipation in the air almost palpable The crowd was casually dressed and mostly male, wearing cotton shirts and slacks My father often stopped and visited with friends; many of the fans knew each other, as if they lived in the same small town Once we reached the Cotton Bowl, we walked around the outside of the stadium until we reached Gate 2, the front gate, where we climbed the steps and handed over our tickets (My father would not let me hold mine until I was older and ―more responsible.‖) After crossing through the cool darkness of the concrete concourse, we went up a small incline and burst into the light and color of the stadium bowl The big moment of my week was at hand We usually arrived when the teams were warming up on the field, or even earlier, while the players were still getting taped in the locker rooms and only a few thousand fans were in their seats Pop liked getting there early He was in his seventies by then, walking with a cane and neither seeing nor hearing well, and he loathed the long walk from the parking lot to the stadium We arrived early to give him time to get to his seat without feeling rushed To pass the time before kickoff I leafed through the program, staring at the black-andwhite photographs of the players‘ faces, or I asked my father for 50 cents and went downstairs to buy a soda I savored the anticipation in the air, the quiet lull before the high drama of the game The Cotton Bowl was a colorless, outdated concrete stadium, but it seemed as glamorous to me as a floodlit Broadway theater It had no luxury suites, few bathrooms, little leg room, and no amenities other than small electric scoreboards in the end zones—but to me it was the ultimate setting for a game, a monolith that seemed to stretch from the earth to the sky I had never seen a place so big, or so grand A stadium had existed on the site since 1921, when the city built what was then called the Fair Park Bowl, a 15,000-seat stadium made of wood that was first decried as a white elephant until football proved popular enough to fill the seats The original stadium was torn down in 1930 and replaced with a 45,000-seat concrete structure called Fair Park Stadium, which was renamed the Cotton Bowl in 1937 Upper decks were added in the late ‘40s, in response to the soaring popularity of Doak Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner who played for Southern Methodist University The capacity rose to 75,347, making it one of the country‘s largest stadiums DIVERSIONBOOKS Our seats were in the lower deck on the ―home‖ side, behind the Cowboy bench We had a straight line of 10 seats on row 45 in section seven, perpendicular to the 20-yard line closest to the tunnel from which the players emerged The seats were just spaces marked off on wooden benches with no backrests The seat numbers were painted in black stencil on the wood, and the paint was badly faded, as if it were the original coat from 1930 Splinters were commonplace; a seat cushion was the height of modern technology Pop had purchased a bond to help finance the upper decks in the ‘40s, and he still had friends in high places He carefully selected our seats with two strategies in mind: He would not have to navigate many steps because the entrance to the section was right by our row, and we would not get wet in the rain because we were just underneath the upper deck Pop always sat in the aisle seat, rested his hands on his cane, and planted the cane in front of him, effectively blocking the end of the row Woe unto any person with a full bladder or an empty stomach who had to scoot by him to get to the aisle Pop took it as an affront to have to move once he was installed; only grudgingly, and most unenthusiastically, would he raise his cane, stand up, and let anyone pass My father always suggested that I take care of my business before kickoff A boy who sat farther down the row came squeezing past us several times a game; Louis and I giggled quietly as Pop grew more and more exasperated The calm before the game gradually built to the emotional peak of the introductions of the starting lineups, a moment of glory and high ceremony that I always found compelling Each player ran onto the field alone, to resounding cheers reserved solely for him It was the moment when I was most envious of the players, the moment I always envisioned when I pictured myself in a Cowboy uniform (which I often did) I studied the players intently and knew their different styles of running onto the field: Lilly slowly and ominously, Jordan rapidly and almost angrily, Meredith with the easygoing gait of a country-music star The imaginary games I played in my backyard could never begin without a re-enactment of this ritual After the opening kickoff came the game, three hours of exultation and despair, shouts and groans The grownups around me set a relatively dignified example, cheering at the right times, rarely booing, almost never cursing (Except for an occasional ―Throw the son of a bitch!‖) My father was not given to wild applause or cheers, just fervent hopes he maintained with restrained passion Uncle Milton occasionally exploded in a loud cheer Pop brought a radio and an earplug and listened to the play-by-play broadcast on KLIF He demanded perfection and fumed over the inevitable mistakes We never stayed until the final gun, even if the outcome was undecided The long walk back to the car loomed, and Pop did not want to get stuck in traffic Our customary departure time was the middle of the fourth quarter The family joke was that we arrived at eleven o‘clock and left at two for a game that kicked off at one, which was all right with Pop because we had stayed three hours, the length of a game We never told Pop the joke We piled into the car and listened in prayerful silence to the final minutes of the game on the radio Hurriedly, under Pop‘s purposeful gaze, my father wheeled the station wagon out of the narrow parking lot and onto the side roads that took us back to Pop‘s house We never got stuck in traffic; Pop would not have stood for it Back at his house, the rest of the family dispersed, Pop sighed and went upstairs to watch the late game on DIVERSIONBOOKS television, and I said my good-byes and rode home with my father, Uncle Milton, and Louis, who lived next door We listened to the postgame show and reflected on the game I headed for the backyard as soon as we made it home, my imagination stoked and ready for a re-enactment Our familial game-day routine did not extend to the Sundays when the Cowboys played out of town We operated as separately on those days as we did collectively on ―home‖ Sundays My aunts, uncles, and cousins watched on television in their homes; I watched with my parents, in our den At halftime my father and I would make a run to Red Bryan‘s smokehouse and pick up barbecue sandwiches to take home and eat in front of the game (Red‘s was not as tasty as Sonny Bryan‘s, the legendary barbecue dive where Nobel Prize winners lunched, but Sonny‘s was not open on Sundays.) When we didn‘t make it home in time, we sat amid the lush barbecue fumes and listened to Bill Mercer‘s play-by-play on the car radio There was rarely anyone else watching with us on those afternoons My father, a gentle man with a wry sense of humor, was not given to making demands or proclamations as the head of the household, but he was particular about his Cowboy games: He did not want to watch at a friend‘s house, or over brunch or cocktails, and he really did not want anyone watching with us at home He was not antisocial, he just took the games seriously and wanted to concentrate, and he knew he could not pay attention as closely as he wanted if the game was part of a social occasion On the few days when he was forced to watch in the company of others, he went grumbling and felt out of place Our focus on ―away‖ Sundays was so sharp that we were offended if friends had the gall to call during a game Cowboy games were not the time for gossip or serious conversation; a call was not welcomed in those three hours Those who did call were scorned when the receiver was back on the hook What planet did they live on? There were several regular offenders, including one of my mother‘s best friends, and another woman who always seemed to call just as the most important game of the year was beginning They were oblivious to the importance of the Cowboys We were incredulous My attachment to the team was pure in that it revolved around the games, the players, and the Cotton Bowl experience, not the shrill hype so prevalent today Pro football was simpler then, in the days before Orwellian passing schemes and mass situational substitutions on every play, and the fan‘s experience was simpler, too Cable television and sports talk radio were not yet around to take every conceivable notion and nuance and drive them into the backs of your eyeballs Interest was still driven by wins and losses, not by salaries, uniform colors, personalities, commodities, and advertising campaigns Unlike today, you could not buy everything from a toilet seat to a credit card with your team‘s logo on it I had no Cowboy jackets, T-shirts, or sweaters in my drawers, no Cowboy posters on my walls, no Cowboy pens or pencils or helmet telephones on my desk I had no highlight videos, no computer games, no signed limitededition jerseys That was 21st century stuff The symbols of my support were prehistoric I had a blue wool hat with a little white tassel on top and a Cowboy emblem on the front, which I wore in cold weather I had a pair of Cowboy pajamas that shrunk in the wash and failed to last I had a small Cowboy figurine with an oversized bobbing head I had an incomplete set of Cowboy bubblegame cards, which I collected on bicycle trips to the 7-Eleven and stashed in the empty Cuesta-Rey cigar boxes Pop gave me; I always seemed to get Don Bishop, a fine but DIVERSIONBOOKS obscure cornerback, instead of Don Meredith I had a collection of game programs Pop gave me a ball autographed by the ‘65 team, which, I was told, was not for use in the backyard My friend Leonard won a free autographed ball that year by collecting a set of Coca-Cola bottle caps with the players‘ pictures printed on the inside He tilted the odds in his favor by sticking his hand up the soda machine at the bowling alley and pulling out dozens of discarded caps A lot more was left to a boy‘s imagination in those days I spent hours alone in my backyard playing out imaginary games, running around and falling and spewing a breathless play-by-play in imitation of the TV and radio announcers As I went along I filled in the score-by-quarters page from the previous Sunday‘s Cowboy program Sometimes I came inside and typed up a newspaperlike account of ―my‖ game Football was my obsession; I turned everything into a game When my parents gave me a set of Lego blocks, I pieced together teams of football players instead of battleships and castles, marked off a field on my play table, and staged thunderous games Given construction paper for art projects, I made up my own set of football cards and invented a game using pennies as balls When I got a little older I took up Strat-O-Matic football, a board game utilizing cards, dice, and NFL statistics to simulate play For me, this was the perfect vehicle for surviving the seemingly endless week between real Cowboy games—a fantasy world into which I could disappear It became my fiefdom I spent hours alone in my room, behind closed doors, playing out regular season schedules and playoffs, and keeping elaborate statistical charts I had school friends with whom I talked and gossiped about the team in that breathless way that kids do, reviewing the games on Monday mornings and arguing the various debates of the day (Usually whether Meredith was or was not a bum.) But most of my friends didn‘t have tickets to the games, and none seemed to know as much, or care as much, as I did My Cowboy fraternity was my family, not my friends The Cowboys were hardly a box-office hit in their early years They drew an average of 22,647 fans a game in their first three seasons College football was more popular; the ‘40s and ‘50s had been a golden era for the college game in Dallas, and the noise from those days still resonated in the early ‘60s The SMU Mustangs, Pop‘s first love as a fan, had sold out the Cotton Bowl in the ‘40s and early ‘50s, and continued to draw well Texas and Oklahoma played their annual border war every October at the Cotton Bowl, during the State Fair, attracting a sellout crowd, national television cameras, and thousands of partying students The Cotton Bowl Classic was one of the four major bowls played on New Year‘s Day, matching the Southwest Conference champion—usually Texas, Rice, or TCU—against another top team from around the country Doak Walker, Rice‘s Dicky Maegle, and Syracuse‘s Jim Brown were among the stars who turned the game into a major event Pop had not attended high school or college, but he was a serious college football fan His interest dated to the ‘30s, when SMU introduced bigtime sports to Dallas with nationally ranked football teams He saw it as his duty as a citizen to cheer for the home team and support home events He was an SMU season ticket holder, and he bought blocks of tickets to the Cotton Bowl and the Texas-Oklahoma game every year He even kept an eye on the Highland Park Scots, the local high school power, who were popular around town and drew large crowds on Friday nights DIVERSIONBOOKS Against the backdrop of such interest in the college and high school games, it was fair to wonder if the pro game would ever plant roots and grow in Dallas The nightmarish example of the Dallas Texans, an NFL team that came to town in 1952 and left the same year, certainly suggested that the city was not fertile soil for pro football The Texans‘ franchise came from New York, where, as a team called the Yanks, it had lived in the shadow of the more popular Giants and compiled a 1–9–2 record in ‘51 The league office, noting the big college crowds and general swell of football interest in Dallas, bought the franchise and awarded it to a group of Dallas businessmen led by a 31year-old textiles executive named Giles Miller The price was $300,000, with two-thirds covering the cost of breaking the Yanks‘ lease in New York The franchise itself was valued at $100,000 The arrival of pro football in Texas was at first viewed with optimism by the national press The Texas economy was booming in the wake of World War II, creating a perception that success came effortlessly deep in the heart of Texas New York Times columnist Arthur Daley pointed out that putting a team in Texas, where ―they grow money,‖ should help the NFL A columnist for the Los Angeles Herald went so far as to make up a poem: Oh, give me a home where the millionaires roam And three-hundred grand is just hay; Where seldom’s allowed a discouraging crowd And the Cotton Bowl’s jammed every day After considering naming the team the Texas Rangers, Miller and the owners settled on Dallas Texans A hot issue was the presence of three black players on the roster The Southwest Conference was not integrated, and the idea of paying to watch blacks play football sat uneasily in many fans‘ minds Within days of the announcement that the team was coming, a Dallas Morning News columnist reported a rumor that the Texans were ―going to trade the three Negro players for one outstanding performer.‖ In the same column, an unidentified team owner denied the rumor with this comment: ―Chances are that all three of the colored boys will be with the club next fall.‖ The Texans came to town minus quarterback George Ratterman, whose contract stipulated that he would not have to follow the franchise if it left New York (He wound up in Cleveland.) The remaining players, including stars Buddy Young and George Taliaferro, both of whom were black, and future Hall of Famers Artie Donovan and Gino Marchetti, reported to training camp in Kerrville, in the sweltering hill country outside Austin ―It was awful,‖ Donovan said ―It was so hot that the ants stayed in the ant hills There were these huge rattlesnakes in the tall grass by the field If the ball went into the grass, no one wanted to go in and get it because they got bit by the snakes We sent in the equipment manager, a guy named Willie Garcia He managed a Mexican restaurant in Dallas for one of the owners, so they made him our equipment manager He was a onelegged guy with a wooden leg, so we figured he had a 50 percent better chance of not getting bit by the snakes.‖ The coach was a former Notre Dame quarterback named Jim Phelan ―He was one of the greatest men I ever met,‖ Donovan said, ―but he didn‘t know a thing about football At practice we used to bat the ball back and forth over the goalposts like we were playing volleyball.‖ DIVERSIONBOOKS When the players broke camp in September and came to Dallas to open the season, the owners asked them to wear Cowboy hats and boots at a press conference ―We said, ‗What we want to wear this shit for?‘‖ Donovan said ―A couple of guys wouldn‘t put the stuff on.‖ The Texans‘ first game, on Sept 28, 1952, was a 24–6 loss to the Giants at the Cotton Bowl The crowd, which included Pop and my father, was announced as 17,500 The next weekend, only 15,000 came to watch the 49ers and star runner Hugh McElhenny pound the Texans, 37–14 Giles Miller and the other owners lacked the resources and expertise to market the team Their crowds looked even more paltry when the Texas-Oklahoma game played to the usual sellout in October SMU averaged more than 37,000 fans a game that year The presence of black players did not help the team‘s popularity; the Cotton Bowl was still segregated, with black fans herded into the corners of the end zone sections It quickly became clear that Dallas was not ready for a pro football team, particularly one that lost every week By November there was talk that the Texans would fold The Dallas Citizens Council refused the owners‘ request for a $250,000 loan ―They made a big fuss about coming out to save the franchise when we played the Rams, but it rained and no fans showed up,‖ Donovan said Miller and his group gave up and turned the franchise back over to the league with five games left in the season The players practiced in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and played their remaining games on the road The last practice in Dallas was on November 13th, after which the goal posts and blocking sleds were put in storage The players left Dallas and never returned The Texans‘ only hurrah came in a Thanksgiving Day game in Akron, Ohio, against the Bears Three thousand fans were in the stands on a dank afternoon The crowd was so sparse that Phelan jokingly told the players they would go into the stands and personally greet every fan instead of going through the usual announced introductions on the field The Texans then went out and surprised the Bears, 27–23, for their only win in 12 games The franchise relocated to Baltimore, where it was renamed the Colts and immediately sold 15,000 season tickets The Colts were winning championships and playing to sellout crowds at Memorial Stadium by the end of the decade ―The town went ape and we became heroes for life in Baltimore,‖ Donovan said ―Dallas never knew we came and went They saw us as carpetbaggers.‖ That Dallas would have two professional teams just eight years later seems profoundly foolish, but such was the case Not only did the Cowboys arrive in ‘60, costing owner Clint Murchison all of $600,000, but a team in the fledgling American Football League also began playing that year Owned by Lamar Hunt, the son of oilman H L Hunt, the AFL team was called the Texans and also played at the Cotton Bowl Competing for fans with each other as well as with college and high school teams, the Cowboys and Texans attempted to build followings They gave away tickets, resorted to promotional shenanigans, and insulted each other, all to no avail Each team drew few fans There just were not enough in Dallas to support two pro teams Hunt gave up after three years and moved the franchise to Kansas City despite winning the AFL championship in ‘62 Even though the Cowboys had Dallas to themselves after that, they still struggled to capture the city‘s fancy They had a losing record in each of their first five seasons, a slow developmental curve that tested the fans‘ patience Their average crowd was just 32,671 in ‘63 and ‘64, well below the league DIVERSIONBOOKS average of 44,524 There was little traffic to fight before games, no long lines at the concession stands, no big crowds squashing you into your seat Dallas was still a frontier outpost as a pro sports town There was no major league baseball in North Texas until the Rangers moved to Arlington in 1972, and the National Basketball Association would not expand to Dallas until 1980 Television coverage of teams in other cities was limited in the ‘60s, so you supported what you had at home The big summer diversion was a Texas League baseball team that played at Burnett Field in South Dallas Later on, there was another Texas League team, the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, who played at Turnpike Stadium in Arlington A minor league hockey team, the Blackhawks, played at the State Fair Coliseum to small crowds of displaced hockey nuts The Chaparrals, of the American Basketball Association, came to town dribbling red, white, and blue basketballs in ‘66 On summer nights I stashed a radio under my pillow and listened to Gordon McLendon, one of the pioneers of Dallas radio, fake ―live‖ play-by-play broadcasts of the Spurs‘ games; he sat in a studio, read batter-by-batter results off a wire ticker and reported them as if he had just seen them I also followed the Chaparrals, who had such players as Cincy Powell and Cliff Hagan, and played at SMU‘s Moody Coliseum, where a courtside bleacher seat cost two dollars SMU‘s basketball teams, led by Denny Holman, Carroll Hoosier, and Charlie Beasley, often filled Moody for important Southwest Conference games, to which I dragged my father as often as possible Had I been born earlier, I surely would have become a college football fan and prayed in the temple that Doak Walker built; as it was, I knew the names and uniform numbers of many college players, and our family still trundled off faithfully to the SMU games, the Texas-Oklahoma games, and the Cotton Bowl games But college football was a fading light in Dallas when I came of age as a sports fan The Cowboys began to shine; they won division titles and played to big, roaring crowds in their final years at the Cotton Bowl, before moving to Texas Stadium in ‘71 Cheering for them often was a heartache, the result of a succession of playoff defeats, but they were a young, thrilling team, and it was impossible not to fall under their spell The city stopped when they played These were the nascent days of a team that would become known as America‘s Team in the late ‘70s Many fans are barely aware that the Cowboys even existed before Roger Staubach, the daring Hall of Fame quarterback who perpetrated so many comeback victories They did exist B.S.—Before Staubach—in a charismatic incarnation, rougher around the edges, more humble, more human They were not America‘s Team in those days But they were Dallas‘s team A fan‘s support is never more intense than in the early years, before the mind is cluttered with thoughts of sex, cars, music, and the complexities of adulthood Many fans find other teams to cheer for as they grow up—at college, or in a city to which they move—but there is always room for just one team in their heart, the team that causes them to cheer and cry long after they‘ve supposedly outgrown such childishness Often, it‘s the team that mattered to them years ago, above all else I turned 40 years old in 1996, living in a brick rowhouse in Baltimore with my wife and our eight-year-old daughter and five-year-old son I still cheer for the Cowboys I did not lose the urge during four years at the University of Pennsylvania in the late ‘70s, nor DIVERSIONBOOKS have I lost it in the last 18 years, in which I have earned a living as a sportswriter, first as a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald, where I covered high school sports, SMU football, and the Dallas Mavericks from 1979–84, and then as a feature writer and columnist for the Baltimore Sun beginning in 1984 I still separate my autumn Sundays into two categories: Cowboy wins and Cowboy losses My fealty is a reflex after all these years, an immutable habit The bond that I developed as a child in the Cotton Bowl days is strong The Cowboys have inevitably dropped among my priorities as I‘ve taken on a career, marriage, and parenthood, and had much of my passion for sports quashed as a professional observer, but they are still my team Even as they‘ve become too arrogant and lawless for my tastes in the ‘90s, I still blot out their blemishes and cheer for them on Sundays They contributed half of the 12 players suspended for drug use by the NFL in a 12-month period beginning late in 1995, and one of their former players, linebacker Robert Jones, said in ‘96 that he was all but ostracized in Dallas because he was a family man and not a womanizer It is not a pretty picture But I still cheer for the Cowboys, even if I no longer admire them Judging them and rooting for them are separate concerns Admitting such a lifelong love is, for me, tantamount to confessing a sin The first commandment of my profession is ―no cheering in the press box.‖ Dick Young, the New York sportswriter, coined that phrase as a rebuke to his brethren who allowed partisanship to cloud their powers of observation On one of my first assignments for the Times Herald, a University of Oklahoma football game in 1979, the press box announcer barked that anyone who cheered for the Sooners would ―get thrown down the elevator shaft.‖ I knew then that I would have to cheer privately for the Cowboys My concern was eased when I discovered that I was not alone in press boxes around the country, that other sportswriters also tended to have favorite teams they cheered for when no one else was looking I have worked with lifelong supporters of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Giants, just to name two I suspect that most people in my profession harbor such a secret It also helped that I took a job in Baltimore at age 27 instead of remaining in Dallas Covering a team up close tends to extinguish any allegiances; the forced, confrontational marriage that exists today between athletes and the press surely would have diminished my cheers, perhaps even extinguished them I have no doubt that it‘s easier for me to root for the Cowboys from a distance, disconnected from the suffocating hype and seemingly endless stream of off-field controversies Shortly after I became a columnist at the Sun in 1987, I wrote that I had grown up cheering for the Cowboys The Cowboys were in Washington to play the Redskins, and it was a slow news day A wiseacre editor put this headline on the column: Mama, Don‘t Let Columnist Grow Up to Like Cowboys Very funny A friend left this message on my answering machine: ―I can‘t believe you did that.‖ Since Baltimore did not have an NFL team between the Colts‘ departure for Indianapolis in 1984 and the coming of the Ravens, transplanted from Cleveland, in 1996, I have rarely crossed paths with the Cowboys I have managed to raise a veil of neutrality on the few occasions I have written about them, and I even criticized them after a playoff loss to Detroit in 1992 I can separate my professional duties from my loyalty to the cause But it is just a pose DIVERSIONBOOKS The notion that my allegiance might wane with age was forever refuted in 1994, when the Cowboys played the Bills in Super Bowl XXVIII I‘m often assigned to cover the Super Bowl, but I was home that year because of an upcoming trip to the Winter Olympics, so I watched the game on television The Cowboys were heavily favored, but they played sloppily and trailed at halftime If they lost it would be embarrassing, a major upset, and the possibility bothered me more than I was willing to admit My heart hammered and my mind raced, distracted, as I hurriedly read bedtime stories to my children before the second half began I was a wreck I had learned long ago not to take their games as seriously as I had when I was a boy, and yet here I was, years later, discovering that that devotion was still intact I was so relieved when the Cowboys rallied to win that I called my father in Dallas ―That was exhausting,‖ I said I knew he would relate Living away from Dallas has also readjusted the lens through which I see the Cowboys and their fans I have come to understand how fortunate I was to land in the constituency of a winner Cowboy fans have had it easy The New York Giants went 23 years without making the playoffs, yet they seldom failed to sell out a game Same with the Philadelphia Eagles, who went 18 years without making the playoffs I was introduced to this constancy as a freshman at Penn in 1975, when I finagled a seat to the Cowboys–Eagles game at Veterans Stadium and sat among longtime Eagle fans who popped open beers every quarter and relieved themselves in their empty cups When Roger Staubach threw a touchdown pass out of the shotgun offense and I ventured a meek cheer, one fan told me to ―shove the shotgun up your ass.‖ I would have, gladly, if I had had a shotgun Cowboy fans would not have remained so loyal to a loser Staubach once said that ―Cowboy fans love you, win or tie.‖ Attendance fell sharply when the team declined in the late ‘80s after two decades of success The average crowd for a home game at Texas Stadium dropped 23 percent in a span of four years, from 58,726 in ‘86 to 45,486 in ‘89, the year of the holocaust in which Jerry Jones took over, fired Landry, and started from scratch with a team that won one of 16 games I was home for the Christmas holidays that year and went to the last game of the season with my father It was a sunny day, but bitterly cold The water pipes at the stadium froze and the bathrooms were closed, forcing fans to use spot-a-pots The crowd was announced at 41,265, but was clearly smaller The Packers won easily The Cowboys had come full circle, back to the early Cotton Bowl days: they were losing in front of small crowds, their popularity an iffy proposition My father and I were there because we would have it no other way He was a Giantsstyle fan, willing to endure the bad days, and I had that bond that had formed when I was a boy in the Cotton Bowl days I am astonished at what I still remember, at the frozen moments that come tumbling out of the musty vaults of my memory, as clear as the day they went in I remember the game the Cowboys lost to the Steelers in ‘62, because an offensive lineman was found guilty of holding in the end zone on a 99-yard touchdown pass, the penalty wiping out the score and awarding the Steelers a safety that provided the difference in the game (After that season, the NFL reduced the penalty for holding in the end zone from points to yardage.) I remember seeing Jim Brown make two of his best runs at the Cotton Bowl: In ‘63, he crashed into a pile of players and disappeared, but kept churning, popped out, and ran 70 yards for a touchdown; and in ‘65, he broke five DIVERSIONBOOKS tackles on a five-yard touchdown run around left end (Meredith said later it was the greatest run he ever saw.) I remember the dramatic play in ‘66 in which Bob Hayes, sealing his legend in his second pro season, caught a short pass over the middle against the Giants and sprinted all the way down the middle of the field, pursued by his former college teammate at Florida A&M, Clarence Childs, a defensive back who was almost as fast as Hayes, but not quite Sportswriters labeled the play, ―The Chase.‖ I remember the championship games against the Packers, the nightmarish playoff losses to the Browns, all the highs and lows of the exhilarating but frustrating decade in which the Cowboys rose to prominence but also became known as ―Next Year‘s Champions.‖ I remember playing an imaginary game in my backyard in which Sonny Gibbs played quarterback for the Cowboys I remember sitting in class one Monday morning in fourth grade, wondering if I had the patience to make it to the next Sunday, when the Cowboys would play again and life would be worth living And whenever I am walking down the street and smell a cigar, I remember my grandfather sitting in the aisle seat, his hands resting on his cane, an earplug planted in his ear, quietly rooting like hell for the home team Buy the eBook: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBookstore | Kobo **** Connect with DIVERSIONBOOKS: If you liked this book, connect with Diversion Books for updates on new titles and authors: @DiversionBooks Facebook.com/DiversionBooks Monthly eNewsletter DIVERSIONBOOKS ... Conference was not integrated, and the idea of paying to watch blacks play football sat uneasily in many fans‘ minds Within days of the announcement that the team was coming, a Dallas Morning News... was a Texas League baseball team that played at Burnett Field in South Dallas Later on, there was another Texas League team, the Dallas- Fort Worth Spurs, who played at Turnpike Stadium in Arlington... backyard playing out imaginary games, running around and falling and spewing a breathless play -by- play in imitation of the TV and radio announcers As I went along I filled in the score -by- quarters